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Molecular targets of phytochemicals for cancer prevention

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 11, pages 211–218 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

Although successful for a limited number of tumour types, the efficacy of cancer therapies, especially for late-stage disease, remains poor overall. Many have argued that this could be avoided by focusing on cancer prevention, which has now entered the arena of targeted therapies. During the process of identifying preventive agents, dietary phytochemicals, which are thought to be safe for human use, have emerged as modulators of key cellular signalling pathways. The task now is to understand how these chemicals perturb these pathways by modelling their interactions with their target proteins.

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Figure 1: Strategy for identifying preventive agents and molecular targets.
Figure 2: Representative oncogenic signalling pathways.

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Acknowledgements

This article was supported by grants from the US National Institutes of Health CA077646, CA111536, CA111536, CA120388, ES016548 and R37CA081064, The Hormel Foundation, and the Leap Research Program (No. 2010-0029,233) and the World Class Institute Program founded by the Korea Research Foundation, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Republic of Korea.

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Author notes

  1. Ki Won Lee and Ann M. Bode: K.W.L. and A.M.B. contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ki Won Lee is at the Department of Bioscience and Biotechnology, and the Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Konkuk University, Seoul 143701, Republic of Korea, Seoul National University, Seoul 151921, Republic of Korea.,

    Ki Won Lee

  2. Ann M. Bode and Zigang Dong are at The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota, Austin MN 55,912, USA.,

    Ann M. Bode & Zigang Dong

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Clinically approved chemotherapeutic agents derived from phytochemicals (PDF 182 kb)

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Lee, K., Bode, A. & Dong, Z. Molecular targets of phytochemicals for cancer prevention. Nat Rev Cancer 11, 211–218 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc3017

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